The move could trigger impeachment proceedings against President Obama, said his senior adviser, Dan Pfeiffer. A spokesman for the House speaker called the impeachment comments ‘political games.’
Francine Kiefer
The Christian Science Monitor
7/25/2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama will go ahead with a “very significant” executive action on immigration after the summer – a move that may well trigger impeachment proceedings against him, senior Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer told reporters at a Monitor breakfast Friday.
“The president acting on immigration reform will certainly up the likelihood that [Republicans] would contemplate impeachment at some point,” said Mr. Pfeiffer, who has been at the Obama White House since its inception.
A lot of people in Washington laughed off Sarah Palin’s call to impeach the president for executive overreach, Pfeiffer said, but “I would not discount that possibility.” Polling shows strong support for the idea among the GOP base, he said, adding that House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio has opened the door to the possibility with his lawsuit against Obama…
…Given the “broken Congress,” Pfeiffer said, Obama plans to move ahead with another action after he hears advice from the attorney general and the Homeland Security secretary. His criteria will be that any executive action be on “solid legal footing” and have maximum impact.
Immigrant groups want the president to use his “prosecutorial discretion” to extend temporary protection from deportation to the millions of illegal migrants who would have qualified for a “path to citizenship” under the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform, which has gone nowhere in the House. Politico reports he’s considering subsets of that group, based on criteria such as family ties, how long they have been in the country, and work history.
The White House, Pfeiffer said, is also considering what impact an action could have on the politics of reform going forward…
Read the entire article at The Christian Science Monitor.
